“Major!”

A Cazador went down under a French blade. Vivar lunged to wound the Frenchman. It seemed to Sharpe that the Spaniard must be overwhelmed when suddenly a rush of volunteers in their brown tunics erupted behind the Dragoons and attacked them with knives, hammers, muskets, and swords. Vivar wrenched his horse around and shouted at his men to retreat.

Sharpe had backed his own Riflemen to the eastern edge of the small plaza and now he split them to let the Spaniards through. The volunteers did not want to retreat but Vivar beat them back with the edge of his sabre. Sharpe waited till the plaza was clear and the first enemy appeared at its far side. “Rear rank! Fire!”

The volley was feeble, but it checked the French rush. “Back!” Sharpe drew his sword, knowing he had cut it too fine.

The Riflemen followed Vivar into the next street. It was darker now as the day slipped towards a winter’s night. Muskets fired from the windows above Sharpe, but the small volley could not prevent the French from flooding into the narrow street.

“Behind you!” Harper called.

Sharpe turned. He screamed his challenge and swung the heavy blade at a horse’s face. The beast swerved, the pig-tailed Dragoon chopped down, but Sharpe had parried quickly and the two swords clanged together. Harper lunged with his bayonet to the horse’s chest and the animal reared, blocking the street, and Sharpe slashed at one of its fetlocks. His sword must have broken bone for, as the horse came down, it collapsed. The Dragoon tried to chop at Sharpe as he fell, but the Rifleman’s sword was hissing up, driven with all his strength, and the steel sliced into the cavalryman’s neck. Blood spurted in a sudden spray that spattered from the gutter to ten feet high on the whitewashed wall of the alley. The broken-legged and screaming horse blocked the street. “Run!” Sharpe shouted.

The Riflemen ran to the next corner where Vivar waited for them. “That way!” He pointed to the left, then spurred in the other direction with his handful of Cazadores.

The Riflemen ran past a church, rounded a corner, and found themselves at the top of a steep flight of steps leading to a street that ran behind a stretch of medieval city wall. Vivar must have known the steps would offer safety from the Dragoons’ pursuit, and had sent them to find refuge while he stayed behind to check the French fury.

Sharpe ran down the steps, then led his men along the street. He had no idea if Vivar was safe, nor if Louisa had escaped, nor even if the gonfalon had survived the turmoil in the narrow streets. All he could do was take the salvation Vivar had offered. “That bastard was a clever bugger!” Sharpe said to Harper. “Inside the city all the time! Christ, he must have been laughing at us!” Doubtless, after Louisa had seen the Frenchmen parade in the plaza, de l’Eclin and most of his men had simply returned to the rear of the palace while a few hundred of the Dragoons had ridden south. It was clever, and it had led to this shambles. There was no honour in it, none, for the French had broken the truce, but Sharpe had seen what little honour there was in this bitter war between Spain and France.

“Fighting in a bloody cathedral!” Harper was still indignant.

“You did for him, anyway.”

“For him! I did for three of the bastards. Three bastards who won’t fight in a cathedral again.”

Sharpe could not help but laugh. He had reached a break in the city wall which opened into empty countryside. The ground fell steeply there, leading to a stream that was a slash of silver in the gathering dusk. Refugees were fleeing across the stream, then climbing towards the hills and safety. There were no Frenchmen in sight. Sharpe presumed that the enemy were still embroiled in the streets where Vivar fought his hopeless delaying action. “Load,” he ordered.

The men stopped and began to load their rifles. Harper, evidently recovered from his indignation at French impiety, checked with his ramrod halfway down the barrel. He began to laugh.

“Share the joke, Sergeant?” Sharpe said.

“Have you seen yourself, sir?”

The men also began to laugh. Sharpe looked down and realized that his trousers, torn already, had ripped clean off his right thigh. He tore at the rotten scraps of cloth until his right leg was virtually naked. “So? You think we can’t beat the bastards half-dressed?”

“They’ll run away in fright if they see you, sir,” Gataker said.

“All right, lads.” Sharpe sensed from their laughter that the men knew they were safe. They had escaped the French, the battle was over, and all they needed to do was cross the small valley and climb into the hills. He looked back once, hoping to see Vivar, but the street was empty. Screams, shouts, shots, and the clangour of steel told of the battles which still filled the inner city, but the Riflemen had slipped through the chaos to this safety. Nor was there any merit in returning to the fight. The duty of every man now was to escape. “Straight across the valley, lads! We’ll stop on the far ridge!”

The greenjackets left the cover of the wall, walking down through the rough, steep pasture which led to the boggy stream where, only this morning, Sharpe had neglected to placate the water spirits. In front of them, and scattered thick throughout the valley, was a mass of refugees. Some were civilians, some wore the ragged brown tunic of Vivar’s volunteers, and a few were Cazadores who had become separated from their squadrons. There was still no sign of Vivar, nor of Louisa, nor of the gonfalon. Two monks, their robes clutched high, waded the stream.

“Shall we wait, sir?” Harper, anxious for Major Vivar’s safety, wanted to stay by the stream.

“On the far bank,” Sharpe said. “We can give covering fire from there.”

Then a trumpet called from the south, and Sharpe turned to find that it was all over. The adventure, the hopes, all the impossible dreams that had come so very close to triumph, were done.

Because, like gold heated to incandescence, the helmets of the enemy flared in the dying sun. Because three hundred Frenchmen had ridden around the city, Sharpe was trapped, and the day of miracles was done.

CHAPTER 18

The Dragoons, who had menaced the west of the city, had ridden around its southern margins to block the eastern escape route. Now they filled the valley to the south where their helmets glowed bright in the day’s last light. They were led by the horseman who wore de l’Eclin’s red pelisse, but who carried a sabre in his right hand.

The refugees began to run, but the boggy ground made their panicked flight clumsy and slow. Most tried to cross the stream, some went north, while a few ran towards the dubious safety of Sharpe’s Riflemen.

“Sir?” Harper asked.

But there was nothing helpful that Sharpe could say in answer. It was over. No safety lay in the tumult which still echoed within the city, nor was there time to cross the stream or retreat northwards. The Rifles were in open ground, trapped by cavalry, and Sharpe must form a rally square and fight the bastards to the end. A soldier might be beaten, but he never grovelled. He would take as many of the triumphant bastards as he could and, in years to come, when French soldiers crouched by camp fires in some remote land, a few would shudder to remember a fight in a northern Spanish valley. “Form up! Three ranks!” Sharpe would fire one volley, then contract into the square. The hooves would thunder past, the blades slash and glitter, and slowly his men would be cut down.

Sharpe cut at a weed patch with his sword. “I’m not going to surrender, Sergeant.”

“Never thought you would, sir.”

“But once we’re broken, the men can give up.”

“Not if I’m watching them, sir.”

Sharpe grinned at the big Irishman. “Thank you for everything.”